Steven Savile - Silver

As he neared the far corner a flicker of movement caught his eye.

Frost dropped into a tight crouch, instinctively reaching around for the Browning.

It wasn’t that kind of movement, he realized a moment later. Something had flickered in his peripheral vision. He studied the boarded-up window just above him and found an inch-wide crack in the wooden planks. The faintest of lights danced erratically through the small crack. It took him another moment to realize that the reason the light was so erratic was because of the draft. There was no glass in the window. The candle burning on the other side of the boards was down to little more than a stub. In a couple of minutes it would be dead and the room dark. Frost pressed his eye up against the crack.

There were a dozen mattresses in the small room. Frightened people lay huddled up on each one. Most of them were sleeping. He had found the leverage. Whoever was behind the suicide burnings had taken these women and children as insurance to make sure the “suicides” went off according to plan. Frost felt sick to his stomach. This kind of trade in human life was vile, but he was beginning to understand the kind of people they were up against, or more importantly, the limits of the people they were up against.

On the far side of the room he saw a woman holding two young children close to her chest. He couldn’t tell if she was asleep, but he guessed not. Her body was tense; he could see it in the muscles of her arms as they draped protectively over the kids. Another young girl, this one no more than 9 or 10, was looking up at him. He had no idea if she could see him in the dim light. He whispered, “It’s all right, I’m here to help you.” His voice rippled through the sleepers, causing them to stir. A third girl, this one closer to 16, sat up on her mattress. She rubbed at her eyes and seemed to have trouble focusing.

“Who’s there?” she called out. Her voice spiraled on the last syllable, becoming dangerously loud. The young girl pointed toward the window. She had seen him.

“Shhh,” Frost cautioned with his finger to his lips, worried someone would hear her. It was a stupid gesture given that she could only see part of his cheek and his right eye. Others started to look toward the boarded-up window. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

It was as though he’d said the magic word. The older woman stood, coming toward the window with her two children clinging to her legs. “Oh, thank God. Are you with the police?”

“No,” he said, softly. “And not the Army, either,” he cut her off before she could ask too many questions. “But I am here to help you. I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell me how many people are in there with you. How many hostages and how many people are holding you. Can you do that?”

The woman nodded hesitantly. “I don’t know if there are any others-they don’t let us out of this room-but there are sixteen of us in here, four adults, three teenagers. The rest are under ten.”

“All girls?”

The woman swallowed and nodded. “There were boys, but they took them. We heard the gunshots. I think… I think… they executed my son.” She broke down then and started to cry. He gave her a few seconds to gather herself, but he couldn’t wait for her to cry herself out.

“I need you to hold it together, just a little while longer. What’s your name?”

“Annie.”

“All right, Annie, my name’s Ronan. Right now I am your new best friend, and as your new best friend I’m going to make you a promise. I am going to get all of you out of there. And I am going to make you a second promise now, just between the two of us, I am going to make them suffer for what they did to your boy. Okay?”

She nodded.

He looked at her through the narrow crack in the wooden boards. “Do you trust me, Annie?”

There was another short hesitation, then she nodded again.

“Good. I trust you as well. Now, try to remember if you can, how many guards have you seen?”

She thought about it for a moment, biting on her lower lip. “Six. Eight. I am not sure.” She wrapped her arms around herself. She was shivering. Frost wished he could reach through the window and hold her. There was nothing more reassuring than human contact, especially in a situation li this. Noah was good at the human stuff, he wasn’t. He had to make do with his voice.

“That’s great, Annie. Good girl. Now I want you to get everyone ready so when I come through that door you’ll all be ready to move. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded again.

“Are you going to kill them?” she asked.

This time it was Frost’s turn to nod.

“Good,” Annie said, emphatically. She looked down. When she looked up again he saw the shock in her eyes. Her need to be strong for her two girls was swimming up against a need to just collapse and mourn her son. She had already decided they were all dead and had been curled up in the corner with her girls, waiting for their killers to open the cell door again and take another one of her children out into the darkness. And then he had arrived, and suddenly she dared to hope. But now she was starting to come apart because of it. When there was nothing, it was easier for her to be strong. Those last hours, however many or few they might have been, were all about staying strong for her girls. Now there was hope and hope meant a life beyond their cell. If she started to believe they might escape, that they might have a life left together, losing it would hurt all the more. She had to trust her life to this stranger on the other side of the wall, and it was all she could do not to crumble. Frost had seen it before. He just prayed she could hold it together long enough for him to get them out.

As far as what happened next, six or eight didn’t matter. Even with the element of surprise the odds were stacked against him. As Orla was wont to say, that only made it more interesting. He double-checked the Browning for a chambered round.

“You’re going to be all right,” he promised her. He needed her to believe that. He needed hope to galvanize her, not paralyze her. “In a few minutes it will all be over.” He pushed away from the window before she could answer him, glanced over his shoulder to be sure the night watchman hadn’t doubled back, and then set off around the corner.

There was another wide, green steel overhead door and beyond that a small door. He crept up to it. He saw a small weather-worn fire exit sign and beneath it, the warning that the door was alarmed. He doubted the alarm was still functional, but given the fact they had a night watchman and a Doberman prowling the grounds, he wasn’t about to take any chances.

He looked around for another way in.

Then he looked up.

An old rusty fire escape stair dangled just out of reach.

He smiled. People were a lot laxer about security on the third, fourth and fifth stories than they were on the ground and first floor. He backed up a couple of steps, then took a running jump. Reaching up, Frost snagged the last rung of the ladder and hauled himself up hand over hand until he got his first foot up on the fire escape. The rusty metal made a god-awful racket as it groaned under his weight. He didn’t have time to worry about it.

He ran up the first set of stairs then along the wire-mesh platform to the second set of steps. He didn’t try the first, second or even third fire door. He went straight for the fifth-floor, not looking down as he ran across the wire platform. The door was locked, but the wood around the lock was so rotten it didn’t take a lot of persuading to open. He bumped his shoulder up against the door, once, twice, straining the woodworm-riddled frame, and on the third bump the frame splintered and the door swung open. It wasn’t quiet. All he could do was pray that it was quiet enough.